BACKGROUND
CONFIDENTIAL
AIR SERVICES
Hong Kong/PRC Air Services
5.
First round of talks on Air
Services between
the UK,
Hong Kong and China took place in Peking in September. A
exists on scheduled routes
of CAAC, the Chinese
be tween
airline,
considerable imbalance
Hong Kong and China in favour
which currently operates over 50 scheduled services to Hong
Kong each week compared to 3 Cathay Pacific scheduled flights to Shanghai, one British Airways scheduled flight to Peking and
one CPA charter flight to Peking. We hope to persuade the
Chinese to allow Cathay Pacific to operate at least 2 scheduled
flights to Peking each week and preferably 3, in addition to the scheduled Shanghai flights.
6. Agreement was reached at the first round of talks that
more scheduled services were required between Hong Kong, Peking
and Shanghai but it was not possible to agree details. The
outcome was badly received in Hong Kong and it is important for
confidence there that Hong Kong based airlines, especially CPA,
are se en soon to obtain a fairer share of scheduled services.
7.
Since the last round of talks, the Secretary of State for
Transport has visited Peking and senior DTp
DTp officials have
recently completed the annual Civil Aviation review in Hong
Kong. The next round of talks with the Chinese will begin on
11 November in London.
Dragonair
8. Since the signing of the Joint Declaration a number of new
airlines have been formed in Hong Kong. Of these, the most
significant, and the only one to have obtained an airline
operator's certificate and actually operate an
Dragonair.
Dragonair's origins
are murky
aeroplane,
is
but they are
CONFIDENTIAL
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